TEL AVIV – An article published in Egypt’s government daily Al-Ahram accuses Western intelligence agencies of perpetrating the September 11, 2001 attacks along with other terror attacks in Western capitals in a bid to justify the “war on terror” and the persecution of Muslims.

The article, authored by Noha Al-Sharnoubi and translated Thursday by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), was formulated as a series of questions, but the implications are clear:

The Muslim suspects said to be behind terror attacks both in Europe in recent years and the U.S. 15 years ago were used as scapegoats by the Western intelligence apparatus, which murdered and framed them for the attacks.

Sharnoubi’s “proof” is that the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks had been trained at an American flight school and most Islamic State operatives were Western nationals.

Sharnoubi begins her article by recounting a recent incident at a New York school in which the family of a 12-year-old Muslim pupil sued the school for $50 million over claims the student was forced to sign a false confession that he was an Islamic State terrorist.

Sharnoubi also notes the incident in which a Muslim schoolboy from Irving, Texas was detained for bringing a “hoax bomb” to school in the form of a clock. The schoolboy’s family have since filed for compensation to the tune of $15 million from the City of Irving and the district school board.

Incidents like these, Sharnoubi asserts, are little more than America’s attempt to fool themselves and others.

“What terror are they talking about and associating with Islam or even with extremist Muslims or people claiming to be Muslims?”

Meanwhile, murders committed by the West, she writes, such as “the killing of civilians, women and children by American planes in Afghanistan and Iraq” are not considered terror.

Sharnoubi then regurgitates conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks, saying the U.S. administration’s official version of events is simply not credible.

How is it possible, she asks, that American-trained Islamist pilots penetrated U.S. airspace and – despite “all their intelligence, satellites and radars” – managed to carry out attacks at multiple locations without American forces downing the planes?

“Or was the whole thing planned in order to justify the war on terror?” she continues.

“Does it make sense that most Islamic State members are foreigners [i.e., Western nationals], unless IS is another story that was prepared in advance [by the West] to justify the devastation, partitioning and occupation [of countries] that is taking place and will continue to take place in the Middle East?”

She brings more “proof” of her claim in the example of a video clip showing Egyptian Christians being butchered by IS fighters who are “tall, had the same white [skin], and wore identical expensive foreign-made watches?”

In Sharnoubi’s view, Western “intelligence elements are behind the attacks and the bombings, and later Muslim citizens are arrested and killed and simply accused of perpetrating [the attacks] in order to justify what is happening in the Arab countries in the name of the war on terror, and in order to justify the plan to persecute the Muslims in the U.S. and Europe and expel them? Have we really been deceived, and continue to be deceived, to such an extent?!”